The global cloud security market in retail is expected to register a CAGR of 27.5% over the forecast period (2018-2023). Retailers want to enable a seamless customer experience and ensure staying away from the security breach headlines, hence, they are adopting cloud applications to balance efficiency and security. It helps them to maximize shareholder value, streamline their business operations, and effectively address customer expectations. Though security concerns remain a major threat, cloud security solutions are addressing these threats and allowing companies to adopt cloud-based services. The cloud security market witnessed a high growth when many of the enterprises made a move towards cloud technology for cost cutting, flexibility, maintenance, and agility. This boom led to an increase in cloud-specific threats, which gave rise to cloud security solutions in the retail industry.

Increasing Incidences of Security Breaches is Driving Market Growth

The incidence of technically complex attacks is increasing. Businesses need to ensure that adequate cybersecurity frameworks are in place to counter such threats, and increase their cyber resilience, particularly their ability to detect and remediate breaches and other cyber incidents. These cyber-attacks include attacks that directly target business systems and individuals, which could potentially lead to huge financial and personal losses. Retailers are expanding their technology usage to manage the supply chain and operate services through the web and deploy CRM solutions. Adoption of these technologies will expose them to the risk of data breaches. Hence, the need for cloud security in retail is increasing with rising security breaches.

Cloud Intrusion Detection & Prevention is the Fastest Growing Segment

Cloud intrusion detection & prevention software is one of the primary security software employed for cloud security. Intrusion Detection Software and Intrusion Prevention Software systems are deployed as the gatekeepers for cloud systems, as they continuously monitor the data flow and operations of the cloud system. The system monitors the network for malicious activity that could be a part of a data breach attempt. The system also scans for data sets that could be in violation of the standards, and identifies the primary concerns, including interior protection in the retail industry. The cloud IDS/IPS systems are experiencing growing demand in the market, and are projected to witness healthy growth during the forecast period.

North America holds the Largest Market Share

North America is the largest consumer of cloud security software in the world. This could be attributed to the presence of large enterprises, growing frequency of cyber-attacks, and the increasing number of hosted servers in the region. Many cloud security-providing companies are headquartered in the United States, while most of the companies pilot new services in the country before global launches and deployment. Fast adoption of new technology in this country and growing focus for security is pushing the market forward. The presence of large cloud service providers, such as Microsoft and Amazon, is playing a significant role in the growth of the cloud security software market in the country. North America is expected to maintain its dominance on the market, while Asia-Pacific is expected to grow at a significant pace over the forecast period.

Key Developments in the Market:

December 2017 - CA technologies joined the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) to sustain and integrate open source technologies like Kubernetes and Prometheus.

November 2017 - IBM announced the successful testing of a fully integrated Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) Si photonics chip for Big Data and cloud services, enabling the download of an entire HD digital movie in two seconds.